Hi. This is Paul Zehiser, and welcome to the We'repreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Prashant Saman. And our topic is building socially beneficial companies leveraging AI. Prashant is the cofounder and CEO of Aikido Labs, an AI based platform that addresses the systemic inequalities that lead to chronic illness through early intervention designed around the social determinants of health. Versant, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Paul. It's a pleasure of the year.

You guys are doing such good work. I've been looking forward to this interview since the moment you all pitched me. I'm like, yes. Get them on the show. Like, right now, so few. I'm thrilled that you're here.

No. Thank you so much for having us here. Thank you so much for doing the show. I think I told you this beforehand, but You know, when we started in this walk of life, I it would have been really wonderful and comforting to have you know, a a series like this, and so I'm just grateful to be able to contribute something meaningful.

We're glad to hear. So before we get into all the awesome work that you're doing in the Aikido labs and how you built it, how you funded it, and all the things that we do on this show. Tell us a little bit about, like, what would somebody need to know? Like, what what's some of your background that is relevant to launching a keto lap?

Gosh. Well, so we launched Aikido Labs out of University of Southern California Digital Health Lab, which me and my co founders, Jared Syngit, had established at USC. But prior to that, my family has been in, I guess, the world of service for, you know, for as long as I can remember. My parents are both physicians, both county doctors. And I spent most of my childhood volunteering at the Alameda County Medical Center, which was at the forefront of providing services to Intercity and underprivileged people within Oakland during the 8th 8th epidemic. And so my earliest memories are volunteering there. My aunt ran a program at the University of Houston Downtown still runs a program there that's focused on bringing underprivileged youth into a college ecosystem, you know, through a 4 year summer program. And so I interned or worked to their during summers as well. And so I think just at at a very early age was, you know, inspired by people in our family, particularly women that were working in service and usually in service towards helping people thrive in ways that were meaningful to them. After college, I moved back to San Francisco, and myself and my cofounder, Jared, got involved in what was then a a little bit more of a counterculture entrepreneurial scene. It wasn't kind of the the programmer culture or the tech culture that we associated with San Francisco these days. It was a little bit more connected to the arts and yeah. I guess the counter culture is the best way of thinking about it. And this is o 7, and so the backdrop of that time was the economic crisis. And we were seeing a bunch of charitable organizations that either we were involved with or our friends were working at or just part of the San Francisco tribe struggling because they were losing donors. They were losing contributions because people were were giving less during that that very difficult time. And so we kinda fell into starting what became our 1st venture give change a a nonprofit. We didn't even call it a technology organization, but a nonprofit that was trying to help these charities engage new donors, younger donors through this kind of new world of social media that was taking hold. And Now there was also a small contingent of Mason social entrepreneurs. Our social enterprises at that point in time, things like Kiva, the extraordinaries, organizations worth that were at the Intersection of Impact And Technology, But we're all just kind of huddling together, you know, building something. It wasn't a scene yet, but it was, like, a small tribe. and we fell into that during the process of building give change. I mean, the way we built it was literally getting books from Barnes And Noble and learning how to code. And, you know, Jared built the 1st prototype of that technology, you know, by himself, you know, with with online guides and kind of the indexes in in a written manual. And so that, you know, that company blossomed, and we worked with charities like architecture with humanity, doctors at borders, and that kind of sealed fueled my faith in in terms of working at this trying to work at this Intersection of of impact and technology. We built another company after that, or I built another company after that with another social entrepreneur named Lloyd Nimitz, who had founded help Argentina. which was a online giving platform, but for Argentinian philanthropies. So helping those charities and redirecting funds back to those charities. And we wanted to do something similar to give change in Health Argentina, but for volunteerism. And that turned into a company called Crew, which was acquired in 2013. And then that's when I started the USCT Health Lab trying to explore how data this kind of new world of data that was developing particularly around public health and the safety net, how we can use that force to address some of the systemic issues that we see in health care in the safety net.

So you didn't just start last week is what you're telling her. I mean, this is great. You know? pretty much last week. Yeah. You've been doing this a little while. Yeah. That's somebody who got on Twitter in 2008 and was, like, you know, trying to find our community. We didn't even know what to call it in 2008 when I started. Was it social entrepreneurship or social enterprise or capitalism or business for good. Like -- Oh, yeah. -- you didn't even know how to find each other. Which hashtags do we use? Right?

Yeah. Is it an is it if I'm doing a nonprofit, does it have to be a nonprofit, or can I be doing a for profit? No. Exactly. to be about environmentalism. Is it. You know? Like, there was a lot of a lot of energy, but not a lot of organization. And I think that actually created a really interesting climate, honestly. But but, yeah, there was, you know, infrastructure that was being built in things like the impact, but then we which we've we've talked about where a lot of of entrepreneurial individuals started flocking to that. Just didn't really feel like they wanted to work in, you know, in spaces or environments that were just purely around tech. And so I think there was a lot of a lot of energy that didn't exactly know how to get organized, which made for a lot of amazing serendipitous interactions and connections and blossoms into amazing businesses.

Absolutely. So we're already getting some fabulous links, listeners. If you're new here, just know I tried to work really hard to get all the links in the show notes. So there's at least 6 or 7 of them already. I them down, check the show notes, like, what does Impact Hub? It's awesome in the impact space. Things like that will be in the show notes. So along the way, you you had some great experiences. You had some good background, and along the way, you came up with this idea of health inequity. Like, that's a place where there's room for growth, shall we say. Talk to us a little bit. Like, what was some of the core things you were saying, we Samant to address this with the Aikido loud.

Well, the initial thought was that was more of kind of a, you know, a macro observation, which is that you have this multi $1,000,000,000,000 safety net. And, you know, by really any measure, are you have you continue to have a widening wealth gap. You continue to have a massive discrepancy between those who have resources and those who don't have resources in terms of their outcomes economically, socially health wise. And so there just seems to be this sort of structural question mark around where you're investing more and more and more money in any dimension you you evaluated, you know, in this safety net, whether it's in health care or whether it's in education or other social service programs. But you continue to have these same same issues. And and so it's more of a question. Like, why is that the way it is? can the world of of data or this force of, you know, this kind of newly organized force of data. And what I mean by that is that, you know, you have more and more data being generated, you know, across any walk of life in the past, you know, 20 years. And and that data is finally being able to be harnessed in a in a manner that just wasn't possible, you know, when we first started developing these these databases for administrative purposes. And so we didn't know what the answer was. We just knew that in general, data can be used as a force to either deal with things in a more pressured manner or change dramatically change the cost structure around things. So you can provide services and programs in a way to a wider audience that wasn't possible beforehand. And so what we first did was start the USCD Health Lab, which became kind of a almost like a a submarine to explore the waters of of this of this safety net ecosystem it gave us a way to look under the hood within an ecosystem like Los Angeles, which is a unique place because you have kind of all different kinds of walks of life within LA. It's like almost like a a collection of every different kind of city in America in 1 in one megacity. And so looking at at Los Angeles, we were able to see, you know, kind of where where the facing it challenges that we're that we're all that we all see, you know, visually in things like people experiencing homelessness and the rising numbers, people experiencing homelessness. where those challenges could be addressed with better utilization of data or data enabled technologies.

Yeah. That this was one of the things that was so exciting and got my attention. Like, you were explicitly looking to use Big Data, AI, machine learning, those kinds of technologies to help folks who are homeless or marginally housed or you know, really on the edge financially of, you know, just making it day to day. And from the inception, you're like, we're gonna use these really powerful tools to go right into that population who's so oftentimes not on people's radars. Is that fair to say? That was, like, front and center and what you all were wanting to do?

Yeah. I think that it was, you know, that it wasn't the buzzword of AI or AI wasn't really a buzzword back then yet or at least in a way that it's become

a category after Just to go back back then. When when did you all start?

Yeah. So we started the lab in 2013, and we launched a Aikido in 2015. And once you know, we we launched a keto in 20 15. It was funded by Y Combinator in 2015, and then we kind of launched the 1st commercial product in 2016. But at that point in time, you know, it it wasn't chat. GPT hadn't revolutionized. the way we're thinking about the potential of artificial intelligence yet. It was certainly a trend. They were certainly called kind of the first wave of artificial intelligence versus the second wave that we're in now. But we knew that there was Problems like homelessness are are wicked issues. If you don't address up stream concerns, upstream meaning kind of the systemic inequities that people face around nutrition, education, economic opportunity, you're never going to act actually eliminate something like homelessness. And so they're you know, to to be able to address those problems in an upstream manner effectively it just seems pretty obvious that data can be an amazing force. And so that that has always been the focus.

Nice. So you launched the lab in 2013, 2015, you start saying, okay. We're gonna take this data, this very interesting emerging field of what people are doing with computers and the precursors, let's call it maybe. Is that fair to say of artificial intelligence? Right? What we now might call it, you know, like, let's go there and you get involved and one of the better known entrepreneurial support systems on the planet Y Combinator. Tell us a little bit about that experience.

Well, you know, I I would say that There's a a lot oh, I hear pretty often, particularly nowadays. Now is Y Combinator overhyped? Is it really that valuable is it you know, are are the are the people who operate it. Really that's smart are the founder's really that Samant. And, you know, when we were initially funded by YC, I I I'd certainly came into that environment with a little bit of that skepticism, but I can tell you that it was it is one of the most incredibly intelligent communities that I've had the pleasure of being a part of. Like, incredibly valuable from a knowledge standpoint, well meaning, honestly, at, you know, the the the thing that they're also impressed me and surprised me about the about the community was how how much the the leaders that organization wanted to get pushed the world in a positive direction. and people might have different philosophies on what that means, but it was it it wasn't it wasn't just about building companies that make money. It was building companies that make meaning. And so, you know, I I found that to be a really valuable experience between my cofounders. And that was a very valuable part very instrumental and helping kind of direct the company into being what it is now.

It wasn't just companies that make money at companies that make meaning. I love that. That's that's beautiful. So so you got the mentorship and got clarify what was the core ideas and probably some storytelling about Aikido Labs. There's also some funding involved And tell us a little bit about, like, that early stage of getting Aikido labs. Like, what is your core concept? What is the product? How did you get some funding to build it. Tell us a little bit about that early stage of, like, coming out of Y Combinator.

Sure. I mean, I I definitely when we built Crew, the company before we built the lab at USC, Crew was a a venture funded company. It was a venture backed company. And so I really felt that I I I knew everything I needed to know about the world of venture capital that experienced because, hey. We built this the company and had it funded and had it acquired and and all that. Going through kind of the YC process and having access to that that knowledge base and meeting some absolutely inspiring founders and people that have really built some world changing organizations just made me realize that I what I had was a high school understanding of the venture capital world, and this was, like, graduate school. And so once we launched the company in 2015, you know, the way that Y ComEdr works is that you are building towards demo day, which is I think they would define it as kind of like a you know, the entire program is like a railgun to this one event where you're showcasing what you've built to early stage investors. And I think the key thing there that I think is a good lessons for every entrepreneur whether they're building source on a prize or not is it, you know, it feels like it come comes down to being able to show support of the thesis of your business. I think a lot of people still think about creating a business or their first pitch as articulating this pitch. And if the pitch is good, then I'll get funded. But it you know, what it what I I I think it really comes down to is is showcasing really concrete evidence that your thesis is working. And the implications of your thesis working. And what that most often looks like is early traction. Traction meaning you know, sales to customers or presales to customers or support from key partners. Whatever the riskiest, earliest things are, for making your thesis true showing that you are actively derisking it and that is no longer a limiting step. Does that make sense, or is that a little stretch? No. Totally makes sense.

Yeah. So give us a sense, like, what go back to, I don't know, 2016, 2017, maybe 2018. In a minute, we're gonna talk about what a keto labs looks like now, but what what was that early iteration? What what were you getting a yes from the market? We want this.

Sure. So Aikido Labs, I guess, is a was a is a bit of is what we'd call, like, a multi sided business model. And there was different phases of the organization and kind of completion of 1 phase would unlock the next phase. And So it's it's a little bit of a it's not the easiest organization to to get off the ground because there's so much interdependency between these phases. So I have to to simplify, you know, phase 1, was showing that we could actually pull together a meaningful amount of multidimensional information on these vulnerable populations. That information historically has been scattered across a wide variety of databases. Some of it's just in people's heads and it's not shared anywhere. Some of it's in mobile applications. But, basically, you know, it's not it's not the most organized set of data. So if you're gonna do something with predictive analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence. Here's basic data analysis. You have to get the data. You have to have some information. to to actually power those analyses. Right? And in this ecosystem, in this kind of world for safety net, that information set had never really been organized well. And so our first kind of pillar was, hey. We have a way of bringing together this set of data in in a meaningful manner so we can get a better understanding what's happening to someone's well-being, kinda creating a well-being grasp. And our technology is gonna be able to pull together information from these these different parts of the world, these different databases, whether it's healthcare databases, whether it's social service databases, whether it's collecting information through independent surveys that kinda fill in the gaps and create this well-being graph. So that was kind of the 1st pillar. The 2nd pillar was we can actually utilize this kind of, you know, this this this this jigsaw puzzle that we've created towards doing things in a more preventative and predictive manner. We can identify people that are higher risk of illness before they come into the hospital. We can identify people that are actually you know, relatively low risk but are overutilizing services. And the 3rd pillar, which is what we're doing now, is was now that we can actually do these things in a preventive predictive manner, we can actually power a new kind of healthcare system that's focused on preventative care and addressing the social determinants of health. So sorry. All that context to say, the first thing we had to do in 2015,

2016

was to show that we could pull together this data. And the entirety of our pitch was around, look how much data we're pulling together, look how meaningful We can make this data once we pull it together. Look how organized we can make this data once we pull it together. And here are some analyses that we can show that are clearly powerful. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. So so just to operationalize

it a little bit, Prashant -- Yeah. -- help so if I'm somebody who's unhoused or I'm I'm living a pretty marginal life. And I'm in a service area that Aikido Labs is working with. out. You have my data. Right? You have my data from where whatever medical facility I use or social services. How how are you gonna make my life better?

Sure. Well, I think that I think it may be helpful to think through kind of just the example of of what happens without a Aikido or with a keto? Yeah. That'd be a great way to do it. before and after. Perfect. So the current state is If you're if you're the person experiencing homelessness, what's going to happen when you have an emergency situation you know, let's say, a a drug induced cedar while you're living on the streets. Is that, you know, a passerbyer or the 10th passerbyer that walks by you, may call 911 and say, hey. Look. There's a person having a seizure on the street. My short situation is, but I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna move on with my life. what's probably gonna happen then is that a police officer may come by, and maybe they'll call an ambulance. Maybe they'll find a way to get this person into the county ER. When this person who is having this strong procedure gets into ER, Maybe they get some emergency care, maybe they get admitted, maybe they don't get admitted. You know, there are certain kind of realities here where our vulnerable population at some level experienced, some level of demonization. I'm sure everybody who's listening at at some point walked by somebody who's experiencing homelessness. And even if your heart goes out in that moment, you're still walking by kind of in your typical walk of life. And that manifests in terms of how that population receives attention or we get emergency care or gets preventative care. The second thing here is that this process that I just articulated of, you know, a 911 call, a police visit, a fire department visit, plus an emergency room room visit is incredibly expensive. So you're talking about, you know, a person experiencing homelessness, you factor in all the cost, talking about over a $100,000 a year in expense to face in that. And just to put that in context, you know, my my aunt who's on Medicare, she roughly costs about $10,000 a year. So it's an order of magnitude more expensive. And and also that person who we're talking about, I mean, their life is is still ruined. Their life on the you know, once become once someone becomes chronically homeless, their life expectancy, I think, got something like forty one years old. That's without a keto. Now with a keto, we would have short circuit in this entire event. So the the platform would you know, pre identify regions in the city where our patients are more likely the to experience adverse human events. And this is similar to how our you know, during COVID, our our technology was used by a by LA County to identify COVID outbreak hotspots where we're able to allocate the right you know, the the limited testing and vaccinations that were available. So through this sort of hot spot and capability, we can identify, you know, where there is a increased level of drug usage based on a to the datasets that we're we're analyzing. And that's kind of like a targeting system almost. That feeds where we would send our street medicine teams to round. And, you know, our street medicine teams are provider teams that are literally patrolling the streets or are not controlling, I guess, being they're rounding on the streets, and they're able to meet patients intent community that post a week for those patients to come into facilities which they oftentimes don't. And that entire administrative process is automated by our platform, and that's, again, a key part of what artificial intelligence can enable, kind of taking this really complex air traffic control management process and making it 10 x easier and more cost effective to coordinate. And then finally, when our provider teams get there or our partners get there because of our platform were able to dramatically simplify their diagnostic process. They can show up with context information on this patient they can show up with clinical decision support that says, hey. In most likely scenario that's happening to this patient is a drug induced seizure based on these background parameters, almost, you know, increasing their both their diagnostic horsepower and their efficiency so they can see a lot more patients with a lot less time. And that ultimately makes these, you know, street medicine teams, this example, able to handle a lot more patient load in the streets, which is generally more expensive and more difficult than having somebody come into a facility. Does that give you a bit of an image? Totally, it does. Yeah. And

listeners, again, if you're been around for a while. You might know this, but if you're new here, my first career was in community mental health 15 years. including working in a clinic, a rural clinic, mental health clinic attached to a hospital. So I I have some idea of the systems you're talking about. And just something I would highlight, Prashant, is that your DNA economics you broke down, your aunties on Medicaid, and that might be a 5 figure, you know, cost to serve for a year, that 100,000 or whatever it cost 6 figure, one incident, But people who are on house are likely to have multiple incident in a year. So I just wanted to even explain a little bit more from experience somebody's winding up in the air from a drug induced seizure, they're probably gonna be in a more urgent or emergency care level whether it's a mental health issue or they get a staff infection or whatever. Just life on the street is hard. and it's not likely to be we're not comparing 10000 a year to a 100000 a year. We're it's more than that because there's usually multiple there can be. multiple incidents in a year. Is that fair to say?

That's actually fair to say. And, also, I think the you know, and you you you know this being on the front line is that the outcomes and that sort of response driven care strategy or response driven safety strategy is that at the end of the day, the person ends up back in the same situation that leads to those occurrences happening. Right. So it's not you know, there's amazing people that are providing those response services. Amazing people that are helping those during those emergency moments. But systemically speaking, you're setting you're in a system that's going to recreate that scenario over and over and over again if you don't actually address it in the preventative manner. Absolutely. We're spending 6 figures per person

And the end result is they're on the street with no support. It's not it's broken. It's very broken. And -- Right. -- and I just wanted to help highlight both the brokenness and also the economics of to help our listeners understand why you've gotten so much traction This is not likely to be a once a year phenomenon. It's likely to happen -- No. -- where they need urgent or emergency care. in the mental health and or, you know, medical system, multiple touch points over the year. Let's do this. Let's take a quick break. When I come back, I wanna hear what Akita looks like now, what Akita Labs looks like now. And where are you going? because there's some really cool things on the horizon. Before we do that, let's just take a quick break and I wanna hear from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living. But You don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable targeted and time efficient type of support. Throughpalsalazar.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions. Like how to increase your positive impact. fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort. Launch a new product or service successfully. or refine your pricing structure. So it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life. You can find out more by clicking below And thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back everybody. In the second part of the show, Prashant, we wanna talk a little bit about, like, the the what's on the ground right now. So if you put on your social entrepreneur glasses, and you look at a Aikido lab. Right here, we're recording this right at the beginning of June in 2023. Like, what does it look like? Talk to us about your team, talk about the number of programs, revenue streams. Like, what can you tell us about?

Sure. So Aikido right now is responsible for a little over quarter 1,000,000 patients. You know, we've been we've we've been growing pretty fast. You know, we have over 750 employees. We we're growing at over 300% year over year in revenue during the last few years. You know, the the goal for us is to get to over a million patients by the end of next year. and 5,000,000 patients, you know, by the end of 2025. So, you know, we're we're excited. We we're gonna be we we started off as a Los Angeles based company. And, you know, I think I was just describing this earlier, the business has gone through 3 phases. You know, phase 1, amassing data, phase 2 proving that we can do things to them on predictive preventive manner using that data in phase 3, building our our own health system you know, with that data and with that capability of the core, when we started we started in Los Angeles. We started amassing data around the country, but we started the health care system in LA. And now we're really excited to to be, you know, soon by the end of this year, we'll be bicoastal, which has been a big, big objective kind of, you know, paradigm shifting objective for us. And so really excited about that. Yeah. Let's see. What else what else can I tell you? What else is helpful here?

So listen. Now you get an idea why I'm so excited. quarter 1,000,000 patients a year. Right? 750 employees get to 5,000,000 patients a year in the next 2 years, right, within 24 months from now that that you get a sense. Listeners ask pretty excited to share this with you. So good work. Help other listeners understand. So so a couple of, like, granular questions. Like, your team so right now, a little over 750 employees how many of them are working on, like, the tech side? How many of them are working on, like, street medicine side? Like, give us a sense of, like, what's the recipe?

I I there's, like, sort of 3 interlocking units here. Well, at the highest level, there's 2. We have people that are you know, we are a a a a vertically integrated organization. Right? So we we have our clinical organization, our clinical operations. And then we have our technology operations. But I think that in, you know, in this world, I think it's it's important to kind of call out that our technology organization falls under sort of two areas of things. We have a a very large data organizing and data processing and and, you know, model training pipeline and model training team. then we have, you know, kind of our our product development software engineering teams as well. So the organization splits pretty evenly down the middle know, half the team is on the clinical services side, and then half the team is on the broad tech technology side. And as we grow, we'll continue adding more and more a talent on the technology side as well as more and more providers in different kinds of ways as we look at different population

And somebody that's grown really fast in the impact space. One of the things the research tells us is that when there's a sense of purpose at work that attracting and retaining talent is easier, not that it's easy, but with, you know, many founders are saying talent is 1 attracting and retaining talent is a big issue. And the research tells us that when there's this purpose and meaning at work that attracting and retaining people is easier than companies where purpose is not essential to what they're doing. Have you found the research would tell us, Aikido labs would have more success, attracting talent and less issues of retaining talent. would you say that that's been true at all?

I think that's I mean, it resonates with me personally just thinking myself as not just a founder of the company, but also somebody who works this company. You know? There's a lot easier ways to make money than trying to systemically change how we provide Care. I'm with vulnerable. I can tell you that for sure. But it you know, our myself, my cofounders. I we are all very, very engaged. I mean, some of these stories of people that we've been fortunate to have join our company and and, you know, and and really dig into our company are pretty amazing. So one of my cofounders before he joined us, he was the chief business development officer of Tech Medicine. You know, he kind of accomplished everything he needed to in his in his professional career at top of the food chain in academic medical centers. And, you know, he he left that position to join the keto full time. and he you know, he's not this is this is his this is gonna be his life's work. And so that's the way that he sees it. And I think that's really inspiring again because it it's not that he needed to find another avenue in as professional world to keep advancing. He had He didn't choose everything. We've been able to have amazing people like Leslie Margolin, who was the chief operating officer for for Kaiser Permanente national join and dig in as well because she sees this approach to solving problems facing that aligned with her personal perspectives, her mission, her views of of how we shouldn't be spending both time and how our safe initial work. And I can just give you more and more stories like that where people have joined us and are are are just really engaged and inspired by the impact that we can do on a day to day basis. But, you know, or and also people that have left other really amazing institutions because they think that this is a way that they can leave a mark that aligns with how they how they think about their values and what they want their legacy to be. So I think that's definitely true. I think it's actually true to say that if you don't have a mission, it's difficult to to attract talent anymore. I don't know if that was just true 10 years ago, 15 years ago in the technology world, but I think that there's particularly this new generation of of grad. I think that they they really want to feel like they're time is being spent on something that matters. And I'm grateful for that. You know, I think it's very different than nineties. I think it's very different in the 2000. tech boom. It feels like people really want to to see their time going towards something that matters whether that the vulnerable populations and working with them or whether that seems like climate change.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more hearing that over and over, and that's time goes on, hearing it more and more robustly. So listeners, I want you to know you have a competitive advantage. Like, we we work hard in this space. Like, like, You were just saying so eloquently per job. Like, there's easier ways to or at least historically, there's been easier ways, and we work hard to both create thriving companies with strong revenue and have really significant impact at scale. That's not an easy dance, and I'd be lying. I I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't say that upfront. But increasingly, I would add, we have a competitive advantage over what you were just saying, companies that don't have this focus. So I want you to know, listeners, the kind of people who listen to this show, you have an advantage. Lean into it. Tell that story. let people know that you're really dedicated to having a positive impact in the world because both on the talent side and also increasingly, especially for customers or clients under the age of forty, people want to do business. with companies that have some positive impact focus pretty central into their DNA. So use your advantage please. There's other disadvantages we have trying to balance impact and profitability. But this is a huge competitive advantage, and I thank you for sharing those stories with us. Pershan.

Yeah. I I would just to build on that for a second is that, you know, you you have, I think, every company to better attract talent is going to try and position themselves as a social enterprise prize, and there is gonna be more and more sort of discerning forces out there that are gonna say, hey. Are you really doing something that's being full, or is this greenwashing, or is this, you know, kind of faking a bit more than than that we're comfortable with. So I think that the advantage of being kind of a a social enterprise from DNA on up is even more profound when you're going to be able to outflank larger organizations that are gonna be the tenders.

Absolutely. We were talking before we hit record large US airline is just got noticed that a class action lawsuit is being filed or has been filed about some claims they've made about moving the needle towards being carbon neutral. And turns out there's not a lot of evidence for those claims. So, anyway, there's the the stakes are getting higher. Let's just say that. So I could hang out with you all day, Prashad. I love what you're doing. I'm And listeners, you'll see a link to the Aikido lab site. Please go check it out. Amazing word. If you were gonna give a tip to our social entrepreneur listeners, you've created some several things at scale that a lot of our listeners listen because they want to move the needle and create a strong company that has very significant positive impact. If you were gonna make a couple suggestions, to a founder who's, you know, the you of 10 years ago. When you were, like, 2013, we wanna start collecting. Right? Let's go back 10 years. What what do you wish somebody had told you is you were trying to create something that was really strong enterprise and also had impact at scale.

Well, in no particular order. Number 1 is I wish well, I got the advice, and we followed this to a degree. But Samant now. There's no reason why you can't drop what it is that you're doing right now and start working on solving a problem that you find meaningful in the world. There is the best time ever to be a entrepreneur. There is more information out there. The you know, there there's obviously still a weakness in this world, but it's relatively transparent. There's more infrastructure out there. There's more capital out there at every stage. particularly if the building has been meaningful. So start now. I don't care how young you are. I don't care how old you are. I don't you know, there there's ways to make it work. I think the second thing I would say is really I think focusing on the problem in two ways. You know? One is having a pretty clear understanding of the systemic issues that are driving the problem you're passionate about. I think that is I think that's getting that that understanding down sort of root cause level is is important. And then, you know, simultaneously, testing actively testing early whether there is a a market based way of addressing that systemic kind of root cause issue. Trying to make that tangible. yeah, for us, the root cause one root cause issue that we're looking to address is from a from a systems point of view or from a social point of view is the lack of support for early interventions around the social determinants of health. So kind of non health related programs that can impact help downstream things around education and social service support. And nutrition, things that aren't necessarily just about healing a particular disease. We know that there is a a systemic gap there. We also know that there is a need from insurance companies from parts of the health care ecosystem where where they're struggling to provide cost effective care to people experiencing homelessness or people that are other vulnerable conditions. They are expensive for them to manage and that's an actual pain point for them. And so early on, we we we actively validated our thesis around both the systems issue as well as that market need. And if we hadn't done that, we might not be able to get traction for the product that we're actually putting out in the world. So I think that it's double the work, but it's really, really important from from building that early capacity, getting investors on early, that you're getting a lot of traction in both those those dimensions. And if you can, it becomes really magical because investors truly want to fund something that is moving the needle from a market demand standpoint, but it's having a very clear intertwined positive impact. Does that make sense?

couldn't agree more. Absolutely made sense tonight. More than ever, especially 16 years into my journey. There has never been more desire to lift up support, celebrate and amplify companies that are truly not the green washers. Not the impact watchers. Those folks yeah. No. I don't know what to tell you. You're listening in the wrong podcast. I can't help you, but you're truly doing something that's meaningful and having a positive impact. There has never in the 16 years I've been doing it a better time to get social capital, financial capital, collaboration. I I've never seen anything like it as right in this moment, so I couldn't agree more.

Yeah. I mean, I guess the last thing I would say is more of a how for my my point number 2, which is getting that kind of market and decent validation. is get out and go talk to customers, go talk to beneficiaries. Like, talk to lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and talk to people aggressively, do not sit there and make a business plan and hope that that becomes something that you know, that then you can rely on that on that sort of ivory that Ivory Tower based document to a solve your problem and that that's gonna result in some sort of funding and capacity. You know? It really is about just getting as much feedback and traction with people as possible.

In the lean startup, they talk about which is one of my favorite entrepreneur books. They talk about get out of the office. siloing yourself in your own office and, like, falling in love with your own Prashant. It may be beautiful, but that's one of best paths to guarantee you don't succeed and one of the best paths to, you know, increase your likelihood of both making it a profitable business and having impact at scales, get out of the office. Go talk to real humans about their real problems.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that there's a so that book, you're citing by Eric Reese, his mentor at Berkeley, Steve Blank, who I think is kind of considered the godfather of the customer development movement, and he has a line It's grade book, which I recommend. 4 steps to be Tiffany. I think the new one of that was called Samant up owner's manual, which I would recommend to any one of your listeners He has a line that says real product managers wear sneakers, which I love because it's great. Oh, I love that. You know, So I I really do I believe that. I think that it's it is about getting out there. And I think that what people don't may not know is that that traction is what ultimately attracts early stage investors. When they see a line moving up into the right, whatever that line is, whether if it if it's revenue, it's revenue, if it's users, it's users, if it it's something that connects to the to the thesis, to the to the argument you're laying out. You know, the first part of it, the first domino. Hey. The first domino is falling. It's falling so fast that we can't keep up. Like, that's what moves investment. You know? It's not it's it's not the vision. The vision is connected to that. to be like, look. Look. Look at this vision, and the first part of it is, you know, this this line moving up into the right, these users coming onto our Prashant, coming onto our platform, And look at those users coming onto our platform. It's moving the needle from both a market way and then also from an impact way. and it's gonna lead to the vision. You know? Like, that's that's the way to think about it. I think that, you know, again, Elon Musk is a controversial figure for a lot of reasons. But I'll say that, you know, that the first thing that moved the needle for Tesla was those roadster sales. You know? And the roadster sales were undeniable. It was an incredibly hot Prashant, and you could connect the the the movement of that roadster to kind of a downstream thesis of of Tesla as a as a a whole, it was going to create energy around the EV concept. It's gonna take it's it's gonna make something that's an unsexy product into a sexy product. It's going to allow us to be able to build a more mass market car. It's you know, like, you can lay out a vision based off of the traction of that first Prashant. And without that, there'd be no hassle.

I have a sense. You probably wore out a lot of sneakers because you felt something awesome. So -- -- freak out of USA. Where can we send people? Go check out the Aikido Labs website. Is there anything else you wanna invite people to do to get to know you, and how can they help? How can we help as a community?

Well, Well, if you're passionate about the space, you know, we're always hiring and looking for for great people to to join our team. So feel free to reach out and connect with us around that. You know, we would love for people to be more educated around use topics, around the safe network experiencing homelessness. So maybe there's some links that we can share about that as well. And and yeah. And then happy to answer any questions that people might might have. If there's a way to do that, I'm happy to make myself available in a format that makes sense.

Well, we'll certainly put the Aikido Labs site, and you there's a job section if I remember correctly. I don't have it in front of me now. But, anyway, there will be a way to get a hold of the Aikido Labs, whether that's on LinkedIn or an email. We'll make sure that contact page. Your team will let me know what's the best way to do that. But please let's do what we do in this community, folks. I think you get a sense of scale and the care and the impact. Let's amplify. Tell your friends. Go connect on LinkedIn. Share this episode. If you're gonna podcast, reach out and get them on your show. This is an awesome Impact brand at scale. Please do what we do, and let's amplify it. Sean, thank you so much for being on the show today. It's just been fabulous to have you here.

Thank you very much for your time.

So before we go, just a quick reminder, we love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you got an idea, go to the Awarepreinter's website, and on our contact page, we have 3 simple guidelines, gives you a sense of who we're looking for, if it feels like a fit, send in your ideas. So I just wanna say, Thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.